Our purpose is lasting business partnership

COGITA digital media archives 2008. All rights reserved

Specialist

We are a specialist
As a specialist, COGITA is the only company of its type to have operated in the Australia-New Zealand region for more than 20 years. COGITA is focused on ERP software sales and support for manufacturing and distribution companies. The software tools and their names change (MRP, MRP II, ERP) but the issues of customer satisfaction, constraint management, throughput, inventory control and expense reduction remain the same.

We are focused
ERP systems can be found in many types of businesses. COGITA does not aim to work with all of them. COGITA is an expert in manufacturing & distribution businesses and works only with these businesses.

More than quarter of a century

We are established
As COGITA's Founder has set out with each generation of COGITA's Leaders to continue building a company that would last the test of time, they knew they would have to overcome many adversities.

In the beginning prospective clients asked, "How do we know COGITA will be around in 5-years?"

After 25 years people no longer ask that question. Today when COGITA meets prospective clients they know that COGITA is serious about lasting businesss partnership - because COGITA lives lasting partnership.

Founded in 1983, focused on ERP sales & support since 1988, and incorporated in 1989, COGITA is an organisation with Australia and New Zealand leaders who are regarded by many clients and ERP industry competitors as the tough minded princes of an extremely specialised niche — ERP sales and services for manufacturing companies and distribution companies.

We have generational leadership
As a generational company COGITA has carefully extended its internal leadership supply chain. This means that COGITA operates under the day to day leadership (auto pilot) of three experienced and highly qualified leaders (pilots) who were hand picked, in a transformational process, by COGITA's founding shareholders. Working under individual charters since 2006 with complementary accountabilities & responsibilities for operating COGITA so as to satisfy COGITA clients and win new ones, the pilots are an extension of COGITA 's leadership supply chain. This means that COGITA and its services continue, from generation to generation, independently of the founding shareholders.

Good enough for others to regard us as the competition

We are the competition
In 2008, as the global financial crisis and banking collapse became a grim reality for millions of people who lost their jobs and houses, COGITA became Epicor's world wide reseller. In 2008, despite its, relatively, remote location in Australia and New Zealand, COGITA sold, and supported, the largest number of, new, manufacturing ERP licences in the world, for Epicor. COGITA is thankful for the recognition but it wastes no time looking in the mirror. Reality is on the other side of the window. And competition breeds champions. But it is not the only way. Run your own race, under your own rules, and you will always win.

So COGITA does not actively seek to compete with other ERP services & product vendors. Instead COGITA applies the individual and collective imaginations, and creativities, of its leaders, and people, to run its own race - and successfully identify, design and build an enduring business which owns its business niche: lasting business partnership.

In this respect COGITA is different from the organisations who regard COGITA as a competitor. For example, COGITA does not develop ERP systems. Many companies who regard COGITA as a competitor may be branch offices of international software companies who also develop ERP systems. This is not a minor distinction. The distinction creates different cost structures and cultures. The distinction makes it easier for COGITA to endure adversity, without the usual, mindless, head-count cutting, because COGITA does not have the overheads associated with R&D or NASDAQ reporting requirements. COGITA invests in recruiting and retaining only certain types of people, with the temperament and intellectual capacity to be effective consultants, who are acceptable to COGITA and COGITA's clients (manufacturers and distributors) for extended time periods.

Only a focussed company with a deliberate, long term, view is aware of such distinctions and the benefits they create for clients. These distinctions are barriers to competition.

These distinctions have helped to make COGITA the competition-standard for the companies who regard COGITA as "the competition."

We are unleveraged
In plain English this means that COGITA does not borrow money. To put it another way, COGITA is funded 100% from its own operating cash flows and cash buffers.

Long free of term-debt, COGITA pays close attention to the current assets part of its balance sheet. Whereas COGITA's Executive Leaders have an absolute requirement for positive operating cash flows, there is no such absolute requirement with respect to profit.

As a result, from year to year, COGITA achieves varying levels of profitability (according to the company leaders' willingness to decrease or increase COGITA's operating expenses in the interests of long term growth and service to clients, and subject also to the long term capital support of COGITA's Shareholders).

As participants in decades of furious, sometimes bruising, change in software technologies, and associated fields, COGITA's company leaders tithe systematically to create cash buffers against the future's inevitable "Murphy factors."

As the only specialist private company of its type in Australia/New Zealand region, established for more than quarter of century, COGITA enjoys the strength of Executive Leaders, and long term financial resources from Shareholders and a Founder who fully support the company's specialist strategy.

Know more than most clients

We have huge intellectual property
From 1989 to 2001 COGITA sold Qad's MFG/PRO software system. Though COGITA no longer sells MFG/PRO, COGITA continues to provide long term support to the many COGITA clients who use MFG/PRO in Australia and New Zealand. Most of these clients are large, blue chip, FMCG, and/or Food & Beverage, manufacturing & distribution multi-nationals such as Sara Lee or Lion Nathan.

Since 2002 COGITA has been selling and supporting Epicor ERP: Epicor's highly regarded manufacturing & distribution ERP software system. Epicor's large, consistent investments, have powered the development of Epicor ERP from a 1980's, job-shop, ERP system into a 21st century ERP system bristling with enterprise-wide functionality armed to the teeth with useability and connectivity aids -- all designed to address the requirements for discrete, make to order, engineer-to-order, manufacturing and distribution enterprises. All that technology is now SOA based written in .NET and fully integrated with Microsoft technologies including Outlook and Sharepoint.

Nonetheless some blue chip manufacturing companies and their ERP software systems have been supported by the same COGITA consultants for more than 15-years! As clients have restructured their operations and sometimes retrenched staff, COGITA consultants have inevitably grown to know more, and accumulate more information, than clients about their ERP systems.

COGITA's databases contain detailed information about client ERP systems and client ERP operations extending back to 1989. COGITA's support databases and knowledgebase reflect deep knowledge of clients' manufacturing and distribution operations. Because COGITA's databases are secure we cannot show you their contents, but you can get an idea of COGITA's extensive knowledgebase and intellectual property by looking at COGITA's published newsletters. Published quarterly for nearly a decade, Vision newsletters track COGITA's clients' operations in the public domain. Click here to see these newsletters.

Every client benefits from COGITA's deep expertise of manufacturing and distribution companies in Australia, New Zealand, and the Asean countries.

Because it is extended across nearly 2-decades of continuous, specialist, sales and support for ERP systems in engineering companies, manufacturers and distributors in Australia and New Zealand, COGITA's intellectual property and expertise is un-matched for long term ERP sales and support.

Offices in Australia & New Zealand

We support clients across Australia and New Zealand
As the specialist ERP sales and support company, COGITA supports its extensive client base from offices (click here for offices) in Australia and New Zealand. No other company in Australia and New Zealand is as specialised as us in manufacturing ERP software sales & support or as long established.

All COGITA clients are connected to COGITA's network of offices through COGITA's 24x7 online support system. We also accept support calls from casual and regular visitors to our site.